Birgitte Elise Esmark (13 October 1841 – 2 April 1897) was a Norwegian malacologist and the first woman to receive a scholarship from the University of Kristiania (Oslo) in 1879, five years ahead of the opening of the university to women.
Esmark was born in Brevik to mineralogist
Morten Thrane Esmark
Hans Morten Thrane Esmark (21 August 1801 – 24 April 1882) was a Norwegian priest and mineralogist. He is most noted for first locating the mineral thorite.
Biography
Morten Thrane Esmark was born at Kongsberg in Buskerud, Norway as a son of ...
(1801–1882) and Ulrike Benedicte Wiborg (1810–1898). Her grandfather
Jens Esmark
Jens Esmark (31 January 1763 – 26 January 1839) was a Danish-Norwegian professor of mineralogy who contributed to many of the initial discoveries and conceptual analyses of glaciers, specifically the concept that glaciers had covered larger ...
was also a mineralogist who had married the daughter of zoologist
Morten Thrane Brünnich
Morten Thrane Brünnich (30 September 1737 – 19 September 1827) was a Danish zoologist and mineralogist. Biography
Brünnich was born in Copenhagen, the son of a portrait painter. He studied oriental languages and theology, but soon became ...
. While in Madeira, then a sanatarium, to convalesce from tuberculosis, she collected molluscs and insects that she donated to the museum. She then received a scholarship to collect in Nordland and Finnmark from the
Royal Frederik's University where her uncle
Laurits Martin Esmark served as professor of zoology. In 1884 she published a dissertation on the land and freshwater molluscs of Norway.
She was also involved in charity and worked for the poor in Kristiania and with Ida Wedel Jarlsberg she set up an institution for the education of women on Sundays. They also began a Young Women's Christian Society in 1894.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Esmark, Birgitte Elise
1841 births
1897 deaths
Norwegian malacologists